It's still stormy

On Wednesday I rode to my favourite large park and enjoyed some time on my own. I read a book, but then words of my own started breaking into my concentration. So I stopped and put the book down and started to put my own words down. I "wrote" on my little phone screen, so poetry seemed easier than prose. Or maybe it's just lazy prose...

This was part of my view on Wednesday while
I wrote.

What's below is an edited version of what came out in the park.

It's still stormy

Same storm different boat
It's a phrase people are using
About these strange pandemic months.

It makes sense.
Most of us have been stuck at home
Doing things differently to usual
Spending more time with some
And less time with others

But each one has a different household
A different set of griefs, of longings.

I've lost solitude.
I've gained more time with some of my family.
I've lost time with friends.
I've gained space in my schedule to rest.
I've lost a summer visit from a loved one.
I've lost precious farewells with friends.
I've lost more than I've gained.

Every morning I cast myself

In the arms of the God who bears our daily burdens

Lately that’s felt more important than usual
Maybe that will be what I've gained when the storm is over.

Life is usually full of ups and downs

This year they’ve been more intense 

More unpredictable 

More universal 

It’s been odd to go through a global disaster

To experience the same storm here as everyone else

Yet our boats are all different

My boat has two teenage boys and husband

My boat has a tiny backyard, but a beautiful tree

My boat affords little solitude, but it's safe

My emotions have crashed around

From gratitude to grief

From relief to fear

From joy to lethargy

I’ve bounced between 

Action and resignation

Energy and boredom

Feeling free and struggling against confinement

I’ve been disappointed

By myself

And by others

But I’ve also been surprised

By unexpected blessings

I long for things that will never be regained:

time, goodbyes, opportunities.

And some that will be regained, but will take time:

freedom to travel, to go outside without my face covered.
For a life free from the fear of other people's germs.

Same storm. Different boat.
I long to be through the storm.
To be reflecting on this from a distance.
But the clouds haven't cleared yet.

So I'll continue to daily
Cast my burdens on the Lord
The one who promised rest for our souls.

God at work through community

I don't always (or often?) hear about how my words or this blog have helped someone, but did last week. Let's trace some ripples in a pond and, hopefully, show how God's been at work.

When I was in Australia I spent a little time with a psychologist. She is the same psychologist who did assessment back in 1998 when we started on this missions journey. Each time we go back we're required to do a debrief with her and her husband, it's been great to have a long-term relationship with them, even if we rarely meet.

This time I went back a couple more times. I've written here about how that resulted in me being more intentional about cultivating certain friendships in Australia. 

It turns out that the two friends I stay in contact with daily have spent time with the same psychologist. It's been an interesting element to our friendship, because we occasionally reference this common professional and her words. One thing that keeps coming up, and originated with this lady is the concept of "lily pads". I can't even remember if the psychologist mentioned them to me, but my friend hasn't let me forget this very useful concept.

And so I mentioned lily pads briefly last week in my blog post. Each time I write here I share the link to my blog post on my Facebook page, so often people comment there, rather than here.

On this post last week, a missionary friend commented that she found the concept useful in general too, but that it is a hard part of the current situation. I replied saying that planning smaller things like baking on the weekend, a TV series to work through, or a book to read are helpful, or even necessary to staying healthy. She commented that she'd been trying crochet as something of a lily pad, but hadn't been having much success.

A few days later my missionary friend and I received a message from one of my expat FB friends in Japan who'd been struggling with the lack of plans, especially not being able to see family. She found the lily pad idea amazing and very helpful. That it had been so helpful to her blew me and my missionary friend away. It had been such a small interaction, but one that happened in a place that my expat friend saw and was inspired by. She went on from that and shared her revelation with friends of hers who had similar reactions.

What a fascinating, rippling trail of God's grace.

I think at the moment thoughtful Christians are considering what Christian community is all about. In recent weeks/months many of us have been unable to physically meet together like we are used to. What has community looked like in that time?

For me it has looked like all the below:

• worshipping virtually with others, while sitting in my lounge room,
• long and short conversations—planned and unplanned; text, video, or phone call; or even the occasional in-person physically-distanced chat
• generosity—both giving and receiving
• being a part of a loosely-formed book club around a book by a missionary that has helped us to reflect on God at this time
• the giving of grace—in my work, with my family, and with others
• seeking how to creatively bless other people near and far.

You can probably come up with different ways it's looked for you. I will probably think of more after I publish this!

Before I go I want to share another way that friends and colleagues have blessed me in the last little while.

Encouragement folder

Last week God knew I needed a bit of extra encouragement and I received a few other encouraging emails. After I shared some of the encouragement with my two "daily" friends, one of them encouraged me to set up an encouragement folder on my computer. 

I always pass encouragements related to the magazine I work on to my magazine team when I receive them, but I haven't really collected them. I also haven't routinely collected encouragements non-magazine related for my own benefit. 

I'm so excited to be collecting them now, even a couple of sentences in an email can be something to lift my day, and now they can last longer than a day. And that's important. Not only do I work at the pointy end of publishing at times (having to work with authors who aren't happy or don't understand why we've changed what we've changed), I also live with teenagers who sometimes seem to think it's important that they critique my every move and every word. We're spending more time together in 2020 than usual, so a bit of extra encouragement is not to be discounted!

How have you seen community in your life in recent weeks?

It's hard to reflect when you're in the middle of it

A fellow writer said to me recently that she wants to write about the current situation, but is reluctant for a few reasons.

There is a sense that we're living through history that needs to be recorded, but also that in some ways we need to live through it before we can write reflectively about it. There are also a lot of sensitive toes that are easy to step on at the moment, probably a lot more than usual. Additionally there are so many threads running through this current season that it's hard to know even where to start to write much (though much is being written). Hence I didn't get to writing here last week, though I have been adding to a list of ideas to write about.

Despite the strangeness and difficulties, though, our weeks are running past relatively quickly and I've been busy enough to find that I'm tired each evening and certainly by the weekend. Indeed, I don't think I'm alone in finding these weeks and months tiring. There's been so much to adjust to and much to ponder. Just like when we first moved to Japan. Culture shock. New rules. Worries. Grief. It's not always easy to find ways to look after myself. Sharing so much of my day with two teenage boys isn't always fun. I'm glad I've got books to retreat to (I'm soooo thankful for the Kindle Fire I got for Christmas—who knew that would be so timely—and the library in Australia I get to borrow ebooks from).

This was one of the batches of biscuits that I made
for my friends. Australian and Lego biscuit cutters
made it extra fun to give them away to a
non-Australian family.

Over the weekend I indulged in baking, which is probably why I didn't find time to write on my blog, as I'd hoped to. As I wrote in this post late last year, baking is one of my loves. It's something that rejuvenates my soul. I've been doing a lot lately, as many people have. This weekend past I was blessed to have the time and resources to bake for others. I rarely have the time to do that in May, so this was indeed an opportunity. I was able to provide some home-cooked goodies to two families we are friends with. I'm please to say I've got enough flour to continue baking this coming weekend (are Japanese people baking more?). There's a Chocolate Zucchini cake I'm dying to try out again, as well as the ongoing search for the best brownie recipe.

Our weekends have been quiet these last couple of months. Actually quite pleasant, until you realise we've got very few events to look forward to. It's easier if I just focus on today, or even, this week, than try to think too far ahead. One way I make it through difficult seasons is to have what a certain psychologist calls "Lily Pads"—things to look forward to. Part of the challenge of this time is that so many of our lily pads have been shot out of the water. And the related challenge is that we don't know when we can start making plans again. It was fun this morning over breakfast to talk about hopes we have for 2024 (during our next home assignment)! Only God knows if they will come to fruition, but it was fun (and probably quite healthy) to dream about it.

On Saturday I actually hit a wobbly spot in the middle of baking when I realised that we were heading into "Farewell" season (here's one of my posts about this season in 2016). It is a difficult season any year, but this year it's going to be worse because much of it will not be done in person. One of my closer friends is leaving Japan next month and not coming back in the near future.

I've been writing this blog post for a few days now and it's time to wrap it up while I'm feeling able to. Last night I only got about 5 ½ hrs broken sleep and I suspect that might hit hard later today or tomorrow. 

Our 11th grade son had a calculus exam in our dining room at 3 am! It's another flow-on effect from COVID-19. Many American and American-flavoured international schools offer college-level subjects called AP. These subjects cost extra and have a single external exam. Doing well on them gives you college credit at American institutions and, I presume, bragging rights on their applications; but merely helps with increasing your tertiary admission rank (and also can function as prerequisite subjects for some courses) for Australian students. Usually these exams take place in very controlled environments, but they have been modified this year and take place in student's homes at a single time across the world. Of course in an American-centric way, so that all students in this part of the world are faced with doing it in the early hours of the morning. No idea how they stop kids cheating, but that's not my problem. Anyway, though I wasn't downstairs with my son, I couldn't sleep (something about a mother's heart).

I generally don't do well with sleep deprivation, but I think that I've been getting more sleep than usual lately (no long Saturdays at Track meets and getting up a little later because my husband doesn't have to be at school by 8am). So I'm not feeling too bad so far. We've got one more exam on Friday, but it's 5 am, not 3 am. And I write "We" deliberately, because this is bigger than just something our son is doing, with ¾ of the household losing sleep last night!

But back to the idea that reflecting on what's going on right now is hard, not the least because there is a lot of fluctuation intermingled with a lot of same-ness. But I'm reminded of a book I re-read recently: My Seventh Monsoon by Naomi Reed. She writes about different seasons in her life up till that point, but then when she got to where she was when she was writing she said, "It can indeed be a joy to look back and see the way God works through seasons . . . The much harder task is to live within the season 'right now.'" 

A couple of pages later she wrote:

"The stories from this new season are worming their way out, wanting to be told . . . waiting to be told. But it's me. I'm not ready to tell them yet. . . I can't tell the stories until the season is done. Why can't I? I think it's because I don't know how it will end up. I don't know how long it will go on for. I do't know what I will make of it at the end. Or what I will have learnt. Or how I will have emerged. Without the perspective of time, it's very difficult to know. it's very difficult to live in the season right now. . .  

Right in the middle of a season, we just don't know. We can't neatly define, we can't neatly wrap up, and we can't neatly expound. All we can do is live. And in the living, we grow and we learn, we enjoy and we cry, we struggle and we rejoice. We do it right now, without knowing what's around the corner . . .without knowing what will come out of it." (Chapter 16).

I think that summarizes how I feel. All I can do is live right now, and in the living will grow and cry, and struggle, and rejoice.